As cars become smarter and safer, some contributors of Congress want to require them to be built to prevent drunk driving.
Sens. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and Rick Scott, R-Fla., brought legislation last month that would make it obligatory for all new cars and trucks to come loaded with passive, virtually unnoticeable, alcohol detection systems by 2024.
The Reduce Impaired Driving for Everyone Act of 2019, known as the RIDE Act, would additionally allocate $10 million to continue government-funded research into new breath and touch-based sensors designed to display a driver’s blood alcohol degree in real-time, without having the driver do anything. The measure would set aside another $25 million to set up and test the technology in government-owned fleets.
The consignment follows a similar effort in the House by Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan.
Udall stated he’s been haunted by the pain and havoc drunk driving accidents wreak on families for decades. “When you meet with families, and when you see the devastation that this causes, it’s some thing that honestly moves you,” he said in an interview.
During the 1990s, when Udall used to be New Mexico’s attorney general, he agonized over how to minimize the state’s drunk driving associated crashes, which at the time were the highest in the United States per capita.
“We kept wondering, how do we get rid of this phenomenon?” he recalled.
The answer, at least in part, was technology. New Mexico became one of the first states to require convicted drunk drivers to use a breathalyzer to drive a car.
But in a world where driverless vehicles are being tested, Udall stated he’s become exasperated by the lack of innovation and buy-in from the auto industry. He is urging auto manufacturers to associate and fellow lawmakers to commit to a five-year plan to develop much less cumbersome and more consumer friendly devices.
Helen Witty, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, additionally referred to the auto industry’s reluctance to mandated safety improvements.
“I do not think the industry desired to put in airbags or seat belts,” Witty said. “Think about how these … were a battle to get through manufacturing.”
But now, she said, numerous companies have cameras that warn drivers if they show up impaired or have taken their eyes off the road. Those sorts of advances have given Witty hope that automakers will be persuaded by consumers, who desire extra safety features.
But she is impatient for that to happen. In 2000, Witty’s 16-year-old daughter was killed by another teen who’d had too many tequila shots and was driving sixty five miles per hour in a 30 mph zone. According to Witty, the younger driver, who was under the influence of alcohol and high on marijuana, “lost control of her vehicle and spun off the road onto the bike path” the place where her daughter Helen Marie was rollerblading.
It’s a tragic story that Witty has been telling for years to teach the public. She’s hopes the message will help spare other families the ache of her own.
Drunk driving fatalities have declined considerably since the 1980s. But according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration they still account for about a 1/3 of all traffic deaths. In 2017, more than 10,800 human beings were killed in drunk driving incidents.
Since 2008, the federal authorities has spent $50 million on a mission between NHTSA and an automaker group called Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety to advance the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety.
The project is overseen by Robert Strassburger, who represents the automakers. He expects a breathalyzer-type product to be prepared for licensing by next year. While the final purpose of the project is aimed at developing something that detects alcohol without the driver doing anything, Strassburger said, they’re no longer there yet. After more than a decade of work, researchers have managed to improve a extra streamlined model of a breathalyzer — a small gadget built into the driver-side door that the driver blows into.
However, the system cannot discover a specific blood alcohol level yet. Instead, it can only discover the presence of alcohol, Strassburger said.
So it can not tell the difference between someone who’s had one glass of wine and someone who’s had 4 shots of whiskey.
there’s still room for improvements. Strassburger says there is lots of momentum to make automobiles with technology that keeps unsafe drivers off the road.
The question is how that will happen and when.
